Meaningless Proclamation
by blacksouledbutterfly
Summary: After they've broken up Puck shows up at Rachel's apartment late at night drunk.


It's been one month, three weeks and five days since they broke up. Not that she's really been counting or anything. Only she has been counting because it's been a long, hard almost two months. Breaking up with Noah was one of the hardest things she has ever had to do in her entire life. She wishes she could say it was extremely easy only it definitely hasn't been easy for her.

The fact is that she didn't really want to breakup with Noah. The truth is that she still loves him and she doubts anything will really ever change that. But the thing is that they'd been growing part in the couple of months before they broke up. She couldn't really explain it. She just knew that they were falling apart slowly and while she still loves him it was a mutual decision for them to breakup. They both knew things were getting to the point where going to end up escalating into screaming matches between them and neither of them really didn't want to live with that. So they mutually decided that breaking up was the best thing to do.

It's still been a hard almost two months for her because it's not quite so easy to let go of actually loving someone. Loving someone isn't something to stop like flicking a switch or anything of the sort. So she knows it will take a while for her to finally end up being able to truly and completely let him go. She can let go of the relationship but it's hard to let go of the feelings that she has for him. So sometimes she can't really sleep. Sometimes she has a hard time dealing with everything.

She drinks wine sometimes to help herself fall asleep. That night though she decided that the wine wasn't worth it. That night she decides to go to sleep without the wine. It's not always easy to fall asleep without the wine because it's so hard for her to let go of her feelings and her feelings are what haunts her when she's trying to go to sleep. But that night she somehow managed to find herself able to sleep without worrying about the wine, without worrying about her feelings for him.

It's about four in the morning when she hears the doorbell of her apartment ring. At first she's pretty sure that she's imagining hearing the doorbell but in the end she's obviously not imagining it. She wishes she wasn't hearing it though because that means she's going to have a very hard time falling back to sleep. Once she gets woken up in the middle of the night it's really quite hard to fall back to sleep. It's always been that way for her. So she tries to say she doesn't hear it but when she hears the doorbell again she knows she's not imaging it. She knows she has to get up and go see who it is before they keep on ringing her bell and driving her mad with the sound.

So she climbs unsteadily out of her bed and slips her slippers on, pads her way to the door and opens it up without really checking to see who it is. No one she knows would come and see her at that time of night. She isn't sure which of the people she knew would show up without actually checking to see if she was okay with seeing them. Or without giving her a warning so that she would know that they were going to show up. She just didn't like being surprised and her friends knew that. Or, well, she didn't like being surprised late at night like that so they would call her if they needed to see her. But at the same time she can't bring herself to think that it's anyone but someone she knows. Why would a stranger show up at her door?

She wants to slap Noah as soon as she sees him standing there because it's so late- or early depending on how you look at it- and she was sleeping and there's her ex-boyfriend showing up at her door in the middle of night looking and smelling like he just crawled out of a whiskey bottle. The smell makes her nose crinkle and she feels like she might vomit at the smell but she manages to refrain. She's thankful for that because the last thing she wants to do is embarrass herself by vomiting at the smell.

He comes in without even asking if he can. She doesn't expect any less. He just comes in and he flops himself down onto the couch and she rolls her eyes as she closes the door behind her because yelling at him won't do any good. With the way he's been drinking she knows that yelling at him won't do her any good nor will it solve anything so she just runs a hand through her hair and then runs said hand over her face. "What are you doing knocking at my door at for in the morning?" she groans as she moves over to sit down on the couch next to him, tucks her legs up underneath herself.

"You took my key," he mumbles and as usual he's miraculously clear for someone who has been drinking as much as he has. It's always surprised her that he could drink that much and still remain perfectly clear and basically lucid. He doesn't always realize he's going to say what he's going to say before he says it but at least he's easy to understand when he's been drinking.

"Of course I took your key. We broke up almost three months ago." She had given him his keys back when they broke up, too. She was very clear that he couldn't have a key to her apartment and that she didn't think she should have a key to his if they were no longer together. Why would they have keys to each other's apartments after they were broken up? She had to be logical about the whole thing otherwise she would have been tempted to just let him show up at her apartment any time he wanted and she just couldn't have that. It would make everything so much more complicated.

"But you took my key." He says it like it should be the most obvious thing in the world. He says it like he doesn't understand why she would do that and she can't imagine why he would think she wouldn't take her key back after everything. She could always chalk it up to the alcohol getting to his brain but she knows better than that. It's almost positive that he doesn't get it to begin with.

"Because we broke up." She tries to stay as calm and casual as she can but having that conversation so late at night when she just wants to sleep isn't exactly something she wants to do. If she has to talk about this with him she wishes she could do is after the sun has come up. Or after getting some more sleep at least. If she had known that she was going to have to speak to him this late at night then she would have gone to sleep even earlier just so she could be more rested when she spoke to him.

"Why'd we do that again?"

Sighing Rachel tucked some of her hair behind her ears, shrugged her shoulders just a little bit. "Because things weren't working out between us. You know that." It's not something she can honestly say she's happy about. She wishes that things were actually working out between them because she genuinely does care about him. She doesn't think she's ever going to stop caring about him but caring about someone doesn't mean that you belong with them or that things are going to work out well for the two of you in the end.

"Nah." He just watches her for a few seconds, reaches over and runs his fingers through her hair. "You look tired."

"I was sleeping. You woke me up."

"Sorry." She's not entirely sure that he's sorry but she's not entirely sure he didn't either. With him it's hard to tell if he feels bad sometimes. Not that she thinks he's incapable of feeling bad but she's not always sure how honest he's being when he _says_ he's feeling bad. You never know. He could just be saying that to make her feel better. Especially when he's been drinking. "I miss you."

"Noah, don't." She leans away from him because having him touching her that way with them being broken up and all. She normally wouldn't have minded if he touched her when they were still together. They definitely didn't mind when they were together. But since they broke up she had this uneasy feeling with him touching her like that. It brought up far too many memories of how things once were between them.

He drops his hand back down into his lap and furrows both of his eyebrows at her like he can't decide what he should say or do at the moment. He looks so confused and so lost that she almost feels guilty but she can't bring herself to. She shouldn't feel guilty for not wanting her ex-boyfriend to be touching her at four in the morning when he's been drinking. There's something off about it and at the same time it makes her remember all the times that she wouldn't mind him touching her. She remembers all the nice memories and all of the good times. And she doesn't want to in that moment. It's so much easier to pretend that it never happened even though it obviously did. You can't erase the past even if you wish you could. Life doesn't work that way. It will never work that way, unfortunately. "Why?"

"Because we're not together anymore and it feels weird."

"Shouldn't."

"Why shouldn't it?"

"Just shouldn't."

Circular logic. Nothing she shouldn't have expected but she doesn't think that it's exactly a comforting thing. She's tired and she doesn't want to think about why he would say that. She isn't even sure she cares at that point even though she knows that she should care. She just wants to go back to sleep but she knows that's not going to happen any time soon. Not with him sitting there reaching out and touching her that way and talking in circles the way he is. It just isn't her night. It really, really just isn't her night. "Well, it does."

"I still love you, you know."

"Don't." Standing up from the couch she holds out a hand to him. "Don't say that."

"Why?"

"Because you're drunk. Telling me you still love me when you're drunk? It doesn't mean anything when you've been drinking, Noah." Drunk he could say almost anything. He could try to convince people he was in line for the British throne and he'd probably believe every word he was saying when he was saying it not because he's a liar but because sometimes strange things come out of his mouth when he's been drinking. And she just doesn't want to deal with it. She can't deal with it just then. She's too tired. She's far too tired. "Look, just try to sleep it off. If you want to talk in the morning then we'll talk in the morning. But I don't want to hear you tell me you love me right now."

Maybe it's rude to leave him on the couch like that but it feels much better than sticking around to see if he was going to keep on touching her when he shouldn't be or if he's going to keep on acting like it should be fine for him to touch her despite everything. She can't really handle that at that point in time and not just because she's tired but because it brings up far too many memories of what was and what never ended up being. So she moves past the couch and heads into her bedroom, closes the door behind her and locks it simply because she doesn't want to deal with him at the moment. She'd much rather try to get some sleep. And if the door is unlocked she has a chance of having him end up walking in there to talk to her and she just doesn't want that.

* * *

When she takes up she tries the best she can not to think about how he showed up the night before. She wishes that he hadn't because she wanted to get some sleep. That's all she really wanted. She wanted to sleep. And that was that. Why wouldn't she have wanted to sleep? She had to sleep. So she doesn't want to think about how he showed up out of the blue like that. Instead she just climbs out of bed and stumbles into the attached bathroom, climbs into the shower and tries to wash away the memories of the night before. She knows it's not that simple but that doesn't change what she's trying to do.

She has this strange hope that when she gets outside she's not going to see any proof that he was even there the night before. But she doesn't really get what she wants. She walks into the kitchen and Noah is sitting there at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee in front of him, his eyebrows furrowed together. Someone who doesn't know him could mistake it for confusion but she knows it's just a hangover. He'll get over it. The only plus is that she doesn't have to make coffee herself.

She doesn't look at him as she goes and gets herself a cup, barely even acknowledges him as she fixes it up the way she likes it and sits down across from him, tucks some of her wet hair behind her ears. She can feel his eyes on her as she sits down and she knows he's watching her but she isn't sure why. It isn't as though she did anything stupid or ridiculous. She's simply sitting in her kitchen drinking coffee and there's nothing more to it.

"When did I get here?"

"About four in the morning. You showed up at my door drunk. I let you stay and sleep it off." She doesn't want to go into what else was discussed simply because she doesn't want to bring up a potentially awkward topic. If he asks more questions she'll talk about it but she doesn't want to mention him saying he still loves her when he was drunk unless she has no choice. It's not a comfortable topic. It's something she honestly hopes she can avoid but hopes don't mean anything in the end and she knows that.

"Did I say anything stupid?"

"Define stupid."

"Anything I shouldn't have."

"I guess." She isn't sure that he shouldn't have said what he said. But she knows he shouldn't have said it when he said it at the very least. If he still loves her then he should only say it when he hasn't been drinking. You shouldn't tell your ex-girlfriend you still love her when you have consumed an insane amount of alcohol, enough to make you show up drunk on her doorstep.

"What did I say?"

She sips her coffee slowly like she can avoid saying what she knows that she has to say, like she can avoid telling him what he said but she can't. She can't avoid giving him an answer. That's all there is to it. So she just takes a few slow, deep breaths and tries to decide how to put what she has to say. But she decides, in the end, she should just say exactly what it is that he said the night before. "You said you still love me." She wishes he hadn't because it's created a strange sort of train of thought in her head. She hadn't thought about whether or not there were still feelings on his end in over a month. She wishes that she could continue to pretend there was no chance in him having feelings for her. It makes everything so much easier. Breaking up isn't easy to begin with but then there are still feelings involved that makes it so much harder.

"Oh." His eyebrows furrow deeper like he's either confused or embarrassed, she can't tell which. Though she doubts it's embarrassment. It seems more like he's thinking really hard about what he said the night before. She's not sure how much there is to really think about. He said what he said and nothing could change that. She just doesn't want to talk to him about it. Not then at least. And she doesn't really know if she wants to know if he meant what he said. It would just complicate things. She just knows that she has to make sure he leaves soon so she can get ready for the rest of her day.

She stands up from the table and is on her way to the sink when she can hear him clear his throat and that's when she knows he's going to say something even if she doesn't really want him to just then. "I meant it." She really wishes he hadn't said that. If he hadn't then she could just pretend that the night before hadn't happened. She could chalk it up as an unfortunate event that doesn't mean much to her in the end. Sadly that seems impossible.

"That doesn't matter right now."

"What do you mean it doesn't matter?"

"You've been drinking. You're hung-over. And even if you weren't? Proclamations of love don't matter right now." She looks back at him, shrugs her shoulders a little as she puts her coffee mug in the sink. "Maybe you still love me. Maybe you don't. Right now that doesn't really matter. Because if you're going to tell me you still love me then I need it to be when you're in the right mind. And you're not right now."

"You know how I feel about you, Noah. How I've felt about you for a long, long time. And the point is that it's never been about whether I love you or you love me. It's about us growing apart. It's about how even finding a time to talk to each other became a chore towards the end. Even if you love me and even if I love you? In the end love can't save a relationship that's broken. If the relationship is to work there has to be effort put into it. And we just weren't putting in the effort. We both stopped with that. It's not your fault, it's not mine. It happens. That's nothing to be ashamed of. Neither of us is at fault."

"I think a part of me will always love you," she tells him as she moves towards the doorway. "And maybe we'll end up together. Maybe we won't. But it won't be because you came to my door after getting drunk and said you still loved me. We just have to see where life takes us. Maybe we'll come back to each other. Maybe we won't."

Pausing in the doorway she turns back around, goes over and leans down, presses a kiss to the top of his head. "I still care about you, Noah. But I can't promise things will get better. I can only see where life takes us."

She walks out of the room then and it's the hardest thing she's done since they broke up. Because deep down inside of her she does still love him. She thinks she'll always love him. But she can't let their lives merge again based on a drunken confession. If they're to come back together? Well, it'll take time. And she can't guarantee that will happen. She just has to wait and see where life takes them.

But walking away? Walking away is harder than she ever thought it could be. And she honestly has to bite her lip to stop herself from crying.


End file.
